Papers of Fay Chandler, 1929-2012 (inclusive), 1965-2010 (bulk)

Artist Fay Martin Chandler was born in 1923 in Norfolk, Virginia. She graduated with a sociology degree from Sweet Briar College in Amherst, Virginia (B.A. 1943), and the following year married Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., a Harvard College graduate who went on to become a professor of business history at the Harvard Business School. They had four children: Alpine "Dougie" Douglas (Chandler) Bird (b.1945), Mary "Mimi" Morris (Chandler) Watt (b.1948), Alfred "Appy" Dupont Chandler III (b.1951), and Howard Martin Chandler (b.1958). They moved around, spending time in a variety of places: Norfolk, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and Chapel Hill, North Carolina; eventually settling in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1958, after giving birth to her fourth child, Chandler decided to become an artist, however, it wasn't until the family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1963 that she began to formally train, eventually receiving a Master of Fine Arts in painting (1967) from Hoffberger Graduate School of Maryland Institute College of Art. In 1969, she founded and became the first director of the Fells Point Gallery, established to highlight the work of the Maryland Institute alumni and faculty, until its closure in 1980. In 1972, Chandler and her family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she continued to pursue her art, while also using a large studio at the Boston Center for the Arts in the South End. Her art was changing at this time, from primarily painting to a method of placing the canvas on the floor and applying different combinations of charcoal, pastel, ink, watercolors, enamel spray paint, acrylics, and oil paint. She also started spray-painting found objects onto a canvas and in 1977 began turning the sprayed pieces into figurative objects, frontally-oriented like a painting. She would also use found pieces that could stand alone or be joined together to make freestanding objects.

In 1988, Chandler renovated a 100-year-old engine house in Brighton, Massachusetts, offering space to artists to use as studios, as well as a place for herself, eventually moving in fulltime after the death of her husband in 2007. In 1995, she founded the Art Connection, a Boston-based organization that places artwork in non-profits and public service organizations. This unique gifting program has identified and catalogued original works of art donated by generous individuals and has supported local social service agencies in the selection of pieces that are meaningful to them. The engine house was used for the Art Connection's early board meetings. Becoming blind in one eye in 2005 did not slow Chandler down. She continued to paint, using even more intense colors than before. In spite of other subsequent injuries over the years, which forced Chandler to temporarily stop working, she continues to produce her art.

Chandler's devoted commitment to arts education has also led her to support the Maud Morgan Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, and in appreciation of her financial support of the project for over a decade, the Sacramento Street Gallery there was renamed the Fay Chandler Gallery in 2010. She also received an Honorary Doctorate from Montserrat College in 2012. Over her career as an artist, Fay Chandler has had over thirty solo exhibitions and her work is included in the collections at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia.